I love days like this
late day sunshine, early summer bliss.
The magnolia smells of home,
no matter how displaced
June breeze, calm and playful
your hand on my bare waist.

Sometimes I stare out beyond what I can see
and wonder who else has been.
Ancient southern trees
covered in spanish moss where leaves grow thin.
The night approaches
a lone rider with no name
the cover of darkness imposed
and fashions mystery just the same.

Growing restless in the thickness of heat
solstice tastes like sugar and a hidden moon
something mindless and indistinct.
Burning for as long as an eye can blink,
gentle little light of beetle make the way
know it could lead me somewhere far, far off
but here, I so wish to stay.

They ask me, “Do you have a plan?”
I say, “I did my plan.”
They ask me, “Do you have another?”
My IV drips the same monotonous drip
And the catfish swim in it, releasing
Bubbles to my heart to fill me with
Some form of full I never feel
And I think of the Mississippi
I think of my mother's warning
Of the alligators, gar, and whirlpools
And I think that’s where my body belongs
Down in the mighty Mississippi
The great river my father played pirate on
The one whose call took him from his love
The river my grandfather built monuments to
To tame, to quell, because that’s what a man does
Stolen land and water, polluted by him
I think of how soft the mud must be
A cushioned pillow for my bones to rest
Crowned with cattails and pondweed
How the water might fill me like the bubbles
From my IV drip, drip, dripping
And the catfish smiles at me, his whiskers
Gleaming in the artificial fluorescence
Of the suicide watch room lights
They say, “Drowning is the worst way to go”
But I smile, and I say to them and the catfish
“I think that’s where my body belongs”

Appalachian Justice:
Often served luke-warm
With salmon croquets fried on the stove
Lunchroom peas from a can
Mashed potatoes that look more like butter cream
And a “Bless your heart”
That sounds more like a curse

now i'm from Georgia
never far from a mountainside
scent of earthen greed
down where hills do fly
but buried 'neath those hills
is a hate that runs deep
where preachers lie
for a false god, on their knees

now i'm from Georgia
land kissed by sea
fortune for the rich
and bloodlust for the freed
because the fog and the apathy
can be heard when they sing
liars, all of them
when they decree:
let freedom ring.

now im from Georgia.

I met him at a dust-bowl bus station
In Mobile, where buses wore dust trail capes.
Roaches clicked in the water fountain basin.

With charisma he denounced
The muddled spray of birth and spring,
The spermy apocalypse brought forth by an
Army of mad babies with syphilis-splintered brains.

He had gambled for three nights,
Wonder and reason backing his chips —
Small blind, big blind.
He had the shoulders of a man who locks the door
And hides the key — an invisible traveling carnival
Trailed his gait on a pace-worn floor.

Bed bugs had made Braille of his arm.
He was going off to a camp south of Cabbage Town
Where he would sweat beneath the sun,
Surrender beneath the stars,
And dream of the ten women he’d made.

He told me he hated knowing he was in control,
And that it was the saddest part of the darkest hour.

days crawl by
and humidity stills the air.
the black flies are late this season,
though around here, most things are.
below the gnat line, girls like me
seldom get to die easily,
perfumed powders
masking the scent of illness,
flushed cheeks and damp foreheads donned
as our feeble bodies recline on fainting couches
to delicately languish away. we know that
there’s a certain beauty to decomposition,
to fungus gnats invading potted soil,
to fruit flies nesting in sink drains. we know that
rotting is a clock that never stops,
tallying each unflinching, humid second while the
days crawl by.

Channel South.
The Mississippi fold
Whipped midnight dust
From the quiet cages
Of homeless graves.

The dead awake
To low night music
As yellow electric light
Mirrors the slow flow
Of gorgeous life
That loves to shine.

So speak to the fine eyes
As if you found them
In a great Khan’s garden,
Elegant and wild